The widespread practice of contraception is a major force
behind the rapidly growing acceptance of homosexuality in western societies as
a natural, sexual orientation. Bluntly stated, the justification for the one
counts as the justification for the other. Contraception formally separates the
sex act from procreation, insofar as it allows a couple to have sex at any time
without the possibility of conception.
Therein lies its link with homosexuality. Sexual intercourse between
homosexuals and between heterosexuals using contraceptives is identical in
this, they are both by their very nature sterile. The increasing legislative
and judicial pressure for the right of same-sex couples to marry is simply the
actualization of the contraceptive mentality.

Before going further, a clarification between contraception
and Natural Family Planning (NFP) might be useful. A common objection to
Natural Family Planning is that it is hypocritical because its goal is identical
to that of contraception--sex without pregnancy. But the two forms of birth
control are worlds apart. The charge of hypocrisy rests on at least two false
assumptions. This first is that the Catholic Church's condemnation of contraception
supposes that it is evil to desire sex without babies. But surely there is
nothing wrong with that desire. Nature does not intend every act of sexual
intercourse to result in pregnancy since a woman is fertile for only a few days
a month while the sex drive expresses itself
throughout the month. The charge of hypocrisy also implies a failure to
distinguish between a desire and the means
of realizing the desire. In using NFP, the
couple do nothing to obstruct the possibility of conception in that particular
act; on the contrary, they remain open to the procreation of new human life. In
fact, it would be wrong to think of NFP simply as a way of avoiding children
since many couples practice it to pinpoint when the woman is ovulating as a way
of increasing their chances of conceiving a child. NFP does not formally
separate sex from procreation.

The importance of procreation reveals itself in the
paradoxical relation between man and woman. They are extraordinarily different
and yet that very difference draws them to each other. She admires his large,
strong hands, but does not wish to have his hands instead of her own; he
admires her small, delicate hands, but does not wish to have her hands instead
of his own. This mirrors the love the three persons of the Blessed Trinity have
for each other. Theirs is a love that does not dissolve the lover in the
beloved but, on the contrary, enriches him. Although each is an actual person,
their unity is perfect: one God. By analogy, the love between husband and wife
enriches each because love's goal is to see the beloved have life and joy more
abundantly. In sexual intercourse, husband and wife are called to donate
themselves to each other and to the extent that it is a perfect donation, it
generously opens itself to procreation. For love is more than a feeling; it is
fecund, producing a reality beyond the two lovers themselves. Of course, people
have always had sex for other reasons, such as lust, manipulation, domination,
rage, etc., but the point is that heterosexual couples have it within their
unique design as male and female to engage in sexual intercourse out of love,
respect, and responsibility for each other.

The above sketches the foundation of the Catholic Church's
teaching that the sex act has two ends, the procreative and the unitive. This
doctrine maintains that the procreative end is primary and the unitive
secondary, but that is not intended to mean that the former is more important
than the latter. Rather it means that the procreative end is primary in the
sense that the act of sexual intercourse is specified to procreation. There is
nothing wrong with desiring sex without conception, but the Church nevertheless
emphasizes the impossibility of separating the two goals. Although there are
many ways by which husband and wife can express their desire for unity, the sex
act offers a uniquely profound way of achieving intimacy and expressing love.
Lovers desire to become one flesh and in sexual intercourse they can fulfill
that desire in a way that is more than merely figurative. First, it is
impossible for two people to physically unite more completely than while making
love to each other. The man desires to enter the woman's body while she invites
him to do so. Second, as Bishop Cahal B. Daly observes in Morals, Law and
Life, in conceiving a new human life,
husband and wife each contribute twenty-three chromosomes, uniting them biologically
in the child. They are united dynamically because their relation as husband and wife cannot
properly be understood apart from their relation to the child and their
relation to the child cannot properly be understood apart from their relation
to each other. Finally, the couple are united eternally by virtue of procreating a new human being who
possesses an immortal soul--an incarnation of their unity that will continue
for all eternity

Conversely, the inability of same-sex intercourse to produce
children explains why homosexuals cannot achieve the unity that is possible for
heterosexuals. Their default response is mimicry, the imitation of a
heterosexual union, replete with hijacked terms like "husband," "wife,"
"marriage," etc. A frequently heard objection from advocates of same-sex unions
is that if childless heterosexual couples deserve the status of marriage, then
homosexuals should be accorded that same status. But the answer to this is that
heterosexual couples who are unable to have children can remain open to the
procreation of new human life, to achieve the aim of marital unity, albeit not
as perfectly as do those who have children. Nevertheless, they remain open,
both in intention and action, to the possibility of their love-making resulting
in procreation. Homosexuals cannot, in principle, procreate and their attempts
at marital union will inevitably be frustrated by the brute fact that members
of the same sex cannot complement each other to attain the kind of unity
possible for heterosexuals.

To reiterate, whereas the physical and psychological
realities of homosexuals render them incapable of the unity that an openness to
procreation allows, heterosexual couples using contraception suffer the same
incapacity by virtue of their choice to separate formally sex and procreation.
By that choice, they have de facto neutered
themselves by making their maleness and femaleness irrelevant. The realities of
biology will not be flouted.

John Paul II devoted many of his Wednesday afternoon
lectures in the Vatican to what he called the "theology of the body." The long
and short of his message is that the human person is an integral composite of
body and spirit. So intimate is the relation between the two that the body is
as much the human person as is the soul. The spontaneous human inclinations,
such as the attraction between the two sexes, accordingly manifest the basic principles
for human sexual conduct. What the late pope was addressing was the modern day
expression of what is called radical dualism or Gnosticism. In its classical
form, this theory maintains that human beings are pure spirits who, for some
reason, got trapped in a fleshy prison, the body. Because the material world,
including the body, was perceived as the source of all chaos and evil, the
Gnostics rejected the possibility that objective moral norms for conduct could
be derived from the body. In the contemporary materialistic world, this
rejection is maintained without any acknowledgement of a soul or spiritual
self. Instead it is the ego or one's self-awareness that is regarded as the
center of the human person. Hence the body, and the biological differences
between male and female, are rejected as norms for conduct. All that is needed
to justify attraction to one's own sex is that it is what one feels or
believes. If one believes that one is a woman trapped in a man's body, then one
is really a woman.

The error of this glorification of self is that ethical
principles are based, not on subjective or personal beliefs, but rather on the
objective criteria of human nature and its drives for fulfillment. Male and
female are objective realities that do not depend on one's feelings or personal
assessment. The love a man gives a woman and a woman gives a man cannot be
matched by the love of man for man or woman for woman. Equally preposterous is
the supposition that a man can give the nurturing love to a child that a woman
gives or that a woman can give the disciplining love that a man gives.

The contraceptive society has infused Gnosticism with a new
energy insofar as its implicit denial of procreation as the primary purpose of
sexual intercourse and marriage denies the significance of maleness and
femaleness. And that denial is a denial of God's creation: "He created them
male and female."

After serving from 1954-58 as a radarman in the U.S. Navy aboard the heavy
cruiser, USS Rochester in the Pacific Theater of Operations, he attended
the University of San Fransisco, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy. He studied
philosophy in the graduate school of the University of California, Berkeley,
finally getting his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto.

He is married to Maryann Dennehy, has four children and eleven grandchildren.
If you'd like to receive the FREE IgnatiusInsight.com
e-letter (about every 1 to 2 weeks), which includes regular updates
about IgnatiusInsight.com articles, reviews, excerpts, and author appearances,
please click here to sign-up today!